Day 4: Mountain Biking & Arches Park

Life on the road has made its mark on the camper as you can see. Hopefully this is not a sign of what our house is going to look like after four days!

Today we went mountain biking. Wow! What a neat experience! We were the only ones on this tour and our guide was awesome. Zach and I both decided this is something we would like to do again. We drove out early in the morning to Klondike Bluffs which is north of Moab about 15 miles. We quickly learned the ropes of riding a "true" mountain bike and then headed uphill on an 11 mile ride. It was dirt and sand trails mixed with alot of slick rock and small boulders. Along the way we saw several petrified dinosaur tracks in the sandstone rock.

We ended up at the most beautiful cliff that overlooked najavo and sandstone bluffs. I had to yell at Zach several times for getting too close to the edge.

The downhill descent was so fun! Very fast paced with white knuckle jumps.

Shortly before this picture, the terrain was dirt with rocks over the trail. To this point I had been trucking along like an old pro. But then all of a sudden I got between a rock and a crack in the ground and then my tire fell into the crack. I was going down. And in slow motion. I had time to look back at Zach, look to the guide, and then back to Zach. I probably could have took a drink of my water. I'm sure it was pretty comical to watch. I landed on my side and elbow right in a cactus patch! I was giggling pretty hard mostly at how ridiculous it must have looked. Zach and the guide ran to where I was and tried to evaluate the situation. I had hundreds of cactus thorns in my arm and the top of my rump. Zach finally got them all picked out and we headed back down the trail. At the very end Zach about tea kettled his bike when he hit a thick patch of sand. He managed to keep it up right and out of any cacti.

PS-we saw more lizards. I think it's the Utah state animal.